RENT AND CAPITAL.
Who is to supply the need ? Not the landlord. The value of Huntstead—of about 2,000 acres with five or six good farm- houses and nearly two score cottages—has yet further fallen since I wrote of it two years ago. It is now a minus quantity. The place is a liability, not an asset, and is probably unsale- able. The amount of the rent steadily approaches the sum of the tithe. Yet here and there rents are still too high. I found one smallholder (his landlords are the Ecclesiastical Commissioners) who is paying 12 an acre for land identical with neighbour farms paying from 10s. to 15s., including the house ; and the smallholder pays additional rent for his cottage. This discrepancy is common. There are worse instances in Berkshire and Wiltshire ; and when all is said on the theory that the bigger the holding the smaller the rent, the difference is unjust and excessive and is a perennial, cause of bitter feeling in country places. The old estimate—made, I think, by Mr. C. S. Orwin—holds, that many farmers get either their land or their house for nothing. The rent is an economic rent for one or other, not for both. Few small- holders are so lucky.
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